The Complete Guide to Big Five Openness Personality Trait

If your dream from last night helped you solve a problem, it could mean you have a high level of openness. But that's not all. Being more open goes hand in hand with being ready to try new things, like foods, sports, and even other countries. And when we act in a way that matches how open we say we are, we feel more real, which is good for our health.

Even though openness is a trait that can be affected by genes, it is not at all set in stone. This piece talks about what this trait means and how to encourage it. These detailed, science-based tasks will help your clients realize their unique potential and build an energizing and real life.

What Is Openness to Experience?

Even though the Big Five model of psychological factors has its critics, most psychologists who study how people are different use it as their main model. The Big Five model divides personality into five factors or traits: being open to new experiences, being conscientious, being outgoing, being agreeable, and being anxious.

David Buss, an evolutionary psychologist, argued in 2016 that this particular breakdown of psychological factors is the most likely model from an evolutionary point of view. Also, it shows how driving forces have probably helped people in different settings throughout development.

Openness to experience

More open-minded people are likelier to try new tastes, hobbies, and relationships. Some people think how we handle information may be related to how open we are to new experiences. More open people may find ignoring things they have seen or heard harder.

Some gates may be easier to get through. At the same time, people who are lower on the scale may have a narrow or tunnel view and pay less attention to things that try to get their attention. A higher level of openness to experience shows how complicated a person regards what they do and think.

This includes being more creative, clever, flexible, and out of the ordinary. Jarrett says that people with a high level of openness may find people with a low level boring or rude. At the same time, people with a low level of openness may find people with a high level too dreamy, self-important, and eager to show off their individuality.

Even though these are probably stereotypes, they raise some interesting questions about how we see differences in people. Even though openness is not the same as intelligence, the two numbers are linked, and our political and other views show how open we are.

People with high scores are less likely to be religiously organized, but they are open and may look for faith. They are also less morally superior and don't see things in black-and-white terms. Instead, they know that not all questions have clear solutions.

Openness isn't a constant.

Openness is pretty steady, with women being more open than men, and it changes the least between the ages of 40 and 60. Even though we are very consistent, we can change how open we are, mostly by exposing ourselves to new things, ideas, and ways of thinking as we go through life.

5 Different Aspects of the Trait

There are many good things about being open as a personality trait and how it affects how we connect with the world around us.

Perception

A new study shows that being more open changes how we see and interact with the world. Scientists were looking into how each eye sees a different version of the same picture. They found more open people could see how the two patterns fit better.

Presentation and perception

Openness shows up in daily life, relationships with others, and how others read these signs. Open people can be recognized by their need for change and the way they show their creativity and intellectual curiosity. Most of the time, they use first-person pronouns and hang out in coffee shops and restaurants.

Family life

At least a little, love partnerships are shaped by personality and openness. People who are ready to try new things are more likely to choose partners who are the same way. And this shouldn't be a surprise since openness affects important life choices like our political views, faith beliefs, and schooling choices. Interestingly, marriages tend to be happier and work better when both partners are open.

Strangers and friends

As they do with sexual relationships, frank individuals tend to have intellectual, political, and spiritual friends with similar interests and views. Open people can get bored with the expected and unchallenging way of thinking of people who are not open. When powerful connections form, open people are better able to offer mental support than less open people but less able to offer real answers.

Reduced risk of mortality

Research shows that openness and other related factors, likeability and school success, make us less likely to die and improve our health. Over 18 years, Turiano, Spiro, and Mroczek (2012) found that more creative people were less likely to die.

Example of Openness in Real Life

There are many ways to show that you are open to new things. A person might be willing to learn about new science ideas, try out strange hobbies, and meet people from different backgrounds. These people come from different families and have different faith views.

Still, they have a strong respect for one another and an honest and interesting friendship because they are both open. In The Book of Joy, the most respected person in Buddhism and the most respected person in the Christian church show a very high level of kindness and knowledge of each other's views, even though they are very different.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu went to Dharamsala, India, where the Dalai Lama lives in exile, to help him celebrate his 80th birthday in 2015. When Douglas Abrams was asked to lunch with them, he met two funny, playful guys who were also respected by millions of religious people worldwide. Abrams was a little scared of these strong guys, but what struck him was how kind, funny, and open they were.

Even though they had very different spiritual backgrounds, he realized they were open to challenges and honest conversation. When discussing a special kind of charity, the generosity of the spirit, the Archbishop and the Dalai Lama said that our self-interest is less of a burden and that they act with less pretense and more openness and honesty.

Interesting Psychology Findings

Researchers have found some interesting things about how open we are to new experiences. People who are open to new suffering tend to have the following traits:

Less likely to judge or stereotype people from minority groups
More possible to obtain tattoos and body piercings.
They are more possible to attempt new foods.
More likely to like trying new things
More willing to have sex with people outside of their marriage
Italy, Spain, Poland, and Germany all tend to vote to the center-left.
Use more problem-based coping techniques than emotion-based or avoidance-based ones, especially in sports. Take on more difficult and trying activities and events.
Less religious but more spiritual
They are more willing to change their minds when new facts come out.

It's important to remember that these are just data links between being open and certain behaviors; they don't mean anything about certainty or hope. Knowing someone has a certain trait is not enough to properly predict how they will act.

Intelligence and openness to experience

Many studies have determined how mental traits and abilities are linked. Being open to new situations will likely help us learn and get smarter while getting smarter might make us look for new chances.

Leadership and being open to experience

Creativity needs leaders who are open to new ideas. These leaders will probably be more curious and creative, open to new ideas, and willing to learn new things. Openness to experience positively affects how people share knowledge, which speeds up the sharing and learning necessary for a team to grow and progress.

How to Encourage Openness: 7 Tips

Most likely, the best ways to improve your trait openness will be the most obvious ones. Several important actions, ways of thinking, and ways of doing things can make people more open.

Spend more time doing cultural things: Music, concerts, shows, and art exhibitions can hel li open your mind, especially when trying new tastes and styles.
Try out new sports, hobbies, and things to do: Be experimental. Why not start learning a new instrument, a new language, an art class, or how to code?
Engage in thinking challenges: Find problems that require you to try new things, use difficult methods, or use intuitive thinking.
Boost your confidence: To be open to the new and different, you need to look at things from different points of view. Take small social risks on the way to bigger things, or ask a friend for hel li if you want to try something new.
Revisit your past: Surprisingly, looking through old pictures and talking with friends has been linked to more creativity, self-esteem, and openness.
Regular exercise: Along with the many other ways that being more active is good for your body and mind, it keeps you open even as you age. People may feel better about themselves and be more willing to try new things.
Become awestruck: Taking on the perspective of a kid or guest might increase intellectual humility as if we are experiencing things for the first time.

More Appropriate Scales, Tests, and Questionnaires

Many personality tests can show you or your business how open they are. The Big Five Personality Inventory is often used in the study, but others are better for personal and business use. Below are three of our favorite tests that look at openness:

Truity, a company that makes online personality tests, has several tests based on the Big Five. A 300-question general personality test and a separate test hel li you determine your openness.
The Open-Source Psychometrics Project has a free Big Five test to hel li you determine how open, honest, agreeable, outgoing, and anxious you are.
Big Five Test is a different open-source project that gives you scores for each of the five areas and shows how you differ from others.

Even though there are a lot of other tests, you should be careful with them because they are not based on personality theory.